Extra Bold is the career handbook that redesigns professional advice for designers from the ground up — reframing design principles through feminism, anti-racism, inclusion, and nonbinary thinking rather than defaulting to the field's traditional gatekeepers.
About This Book
Most design career guides reproduce the same assumptions about who designers are and what the profession looks like. Extra Bold breaks from that template. Written collaboratively by a diverse team, it moves between essays, interviews, typefaces, and student projects contributed by practitioners with a wide range of racial and ethnic backgrounds, gender identities, abilities, and economic positions. The result is a handbook that treats inclusion not as a chapter topic but as a structural principle — one that shapes how design education, professional practice, and creative identity are understood. Essential reading for students entering the field and practitioners ready to interrogate the defaults.
Key Features
- 224 pages of essays, interviews, typefaces, and contributor projects spanning design theory and professional practice
- Written by Ellen Lupton et al, with contributions from dozens of practitioners of varied backgrounds and identities
- Published by Princeton Architectural Press
What You'll Discover
- How feminist and nonbinary frameworks reshape foundational design principles — not as additions, but as reframings of the discipline itself
- First-person perspectives from designers whose racial, ethnic, and gender identities have shaped their relationship to the profession
- A model of collaborative authorship that enacts its own argument about whose voices structure design knowledge
- Practical career guidance that accounts for the structural inequities designers from underrepresented backgrounds actually navigate
About the Author
Ellen Lupton is a prominent figure in graphic design education, criticism, and practice. Extra Bold is co-authored with a diverse collaborative team; full contributor details are available within the book.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 224
- Dimensions: 152 x 229 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781616899189
- Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Graphic design students, early-career designers navigating the profession, educators rethinking design curricula, and practitioners invested in equity and inclusion within creative fields.